Books: Reason's Playboy

THE EMBATTLED PHILOSOPHER (442 pp.) —Lester G. Crocker—Michigan State College ($6.50).

French Philosopher Denis Diderot had the intellectual brilliance that sparkled in an 18th century drawing room, but he sometimes found less conventional ways to display his native gifts. When a lady painter who was doing his portrait objected that his clothes hid his neck, the eminent thinker silently retired behind a curtain and reappeared a moment later "as naked as a worm."

"I should never have dared to suggest it," the lady painter fluttered, "but you have done well and I thank you."

Many a woman probably said the same thing to dashing...